


life is bigger

by 1001cranes



Series: Nemo - Phoenix Fields [7]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: Character Death, Guilt, Its a Thing, M/M, Religious Conflict, Survivor Guilt, sometimes you end up fucking your dead boyfriend's brother
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 13:17:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14671872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1001cranes/pseuds/1001cranes
Summary: "Huh," Linus says. He has a gruffer voice than Nemo. He’s looking down at his hands - callused, careworn. If they were brothers, they were like night and day. “So you're Lysander."“Not what you imagined?” It comes out crackling and peevish; Lysander feels worn dry from crying. His eyes are red-rimmed, his hair unkempt. Far from looking his best."Dunno what I imagined," Linus says. He looks down at his hands. "Don't know if I knew him at all."





	life is bigger

**Author's Note:**

> Linus is Nemo's brother he JUST FOUND AGAIN played by Jon Bernthal because this is my fantasy world don't @ me 
> 
> also uh Nemo sacrificed his eyes for more power and Lysander has them in a little jar because their love is Extremely Goth please also don't @ me
> 
>  
> 
> Extra AU since APPARENTLY Linus would also have died as Emily is a demon 
> 
> Also mild societal homophobia im not sure actually exists in world but HI ITS THE FANFIC REMIX

Lysander remembers that Rowan Sends to him. He doesn’t remember exactly what she said, or if he said anything back. It could have been just two words: 

Nemo’s dead. 

| |

To be more specific, Nemo’s  _ gone _ . Dead leaves a body behind, or at least pieces of one, and they don’t even have that. 

“He went down,” Sariel tells him later, gently, in that halting particular way she has when she’s trying to be delicate. “He didn’t get back up, and then he was just - gone."

“We thought maybe he was invisible, at first?” Fen says. She’s worrying the edge of her cloak. “Invisible, or mist, or -- he can just pop into shadows, sometimes, so we didn’t worry, because he wasn’t there, but then --”

Rowan’s face tightens. “He is gone. I asked.” 

| |

At first, Lysander doesn’t even notice there’s someone extra in the group. He doesn’t really put together that Rowan shouldn’t there, or that the bard isn't with them. The group has a habit of bringing wayward souls into the Keep at the best of times, and Lysander’s not exactly functioning at his best. 

“This is Linus,” Rowan says, gently. “Nemo’s brother. We found him. The…. demon has been living with him. Using him.” 

A brother. To think Lysander had been worried about a husband, a wife -- children, even. In many ways a brother hadn’t really entered his thoughts. 

Linus doesn’t look much like Nemo, at first glance. Linus is taller, and broader, and probably stronger. Rougher around the edges. He wears a chestplate, and the kind of boots you see on a woodsman. He stands straighter. He looks angrier, though that could certainly be the circumstance.

"Huh," Linus says. He has a gruffer voice than Nemo too. He’s looking down at his hands - callused, careworn. If they were brothers, they were like night and day. “So you're Lysander."

“Not what you imagined?” It comes out crackling and peevish; Lysander feels worn dry from crying. His eyes are red-rimmed, his hair unkempt. Far from looking his best. 

"Dunno what I imagined," Linus says. He looks down at his hands. "Don't know if I knew him at all."

| |

They leave Lysander him alone, the first night. They let him return to his Temple, and his small, simple room. He prays to Her -- petulantly, he admits, with hardly any grace -- and She does not answer.

He can hardly blame Her for that. 

| |

In the morning, Lysander stands before the chest of drawers that sits in the northeast corner of the room. It’s a nice set, well-made but not overly ostentatious, and of a dark and rich wood, as might befit a senior priest of the Temple.

He inhales and exhales several times before opening the top drawer.

The jar of eyes is still there.

He slams the drawer shut before he realizes he has moved, before he has even consciously decided to do anything.

Is it crueler, he wonders, to have been allowed to keep so strange a token? Is it a kindness? Will this be a balm to him in the days to come? Is this a gift? Or is this… nothing? Is this simply a jar of eyes that belongs to no one? 

He doesn’t ask Her. Not now.

| |

Lysander pushes his way through the crowds of people in the street for Portia's festival. He isn’t quite certain why he wants to return to the Keep. He’s spent his days there, true, while they were gone, but he’s lived far longer in the Temple. Nemo was a short, fleeting light in the dimness of Lysander’s life. A spark She allowed to be snuffed out.

It’s merely an unkindness, he tells himself. Something overlooked. She took his sister, and that was far crueler. She is a goddess of death. In time She will come for him, and he has served her for years now, and will serve years more before the end. 

_ Please,  _ he prays.  _ Please, did You take him? Is he with You?  _

She says nothing.

She says so little, these days. 

Oh, but of course it is the perfect time to lose the tattered remains of his faith, he chides himself. When there is nothing he wants, nothing that can be returned to him. When he cannot even imagine what She might say to replenish his spirit. He has nothing; why would he have Her?

_ Fuck you _ , he thinks.  _ Fuck you and your silence and your darkness and your levies. Even death could be kind _ .

Then he is at the door of the Keep and prays no more.

| |

Lex tells him that most of the others have gone to see Esther. Rowan is here, praying in the upstairs sanctuary, and Linus -- Linus is in the garden.

Should he say something, Lysander wonders. Would it be kind, or cruel? And what is there to say -- I loved your brother, and perhaps you did too? I wish he was here still? I’d trade the rest of them for him -- I’ve thought about it, what I would give. What he’s worth. 

There aren’t words. There isn’t anything. 

“He’s been dead for six months, to me,” Linus says. He speaks first. It’s after a long pause; Lysander leaning against the doorway, still as the grave. Linus has been running his fingers along the edge of this plant’s leaves, then that one’s. Every inch of this place is holy. It calms Lysander, even now. “I was living in a nightmare. I just didn’t know it.”

“Nightmares are like that,” Lysander says. “If you knew you were in them, they wouldn’t be half as terrifying.” If you could wake up, or see the end, or knew it wasn’t real, nightmares would hardly be anything. Insubstantial as smoke. 

Linus huffs. It’s almost a chuckle. “It was a dream, at the time. It was perfect. I don’t -- I don’t know that we’ve ever been happier. And to know, now, that it was -- that it wasn’t even him.” He shakes his head. “I  _ thought  _ it was him. I thought it was right, and good, and that things had turned around, and it was the prettiest fuckin’ lie I’ve ever been sold.”

Nemo does that, Lysander thinks. Did that. Dropped the ends of words when he was angry. Not clipped and precise, like Sariel, but loose and wild. 

“He was a mess,” Lysander finds himself saying. “He -- he never knew what to say. Or how to dress, or how to act. He was always listening at corners and disappearing when it suited him. He stole books, I think, and he liked to drink, and he was so scared of being forgotten it kept him from doing just about anything.” 

The noise Linus makes is terrible, and Lysander, for a brief moment, thinks he’s been cruel. Thinks that in opening his heart, he’s flayed Linus’s.

When Linus finally looks up, his eyes are wet. 

“Most of that’s true,” Linus says. “Was true. He spent most of his life hiding. He always wanted to learn to disappear.”

It’s not shocking that a demon would take what you wanted and twist it into something terrible; it's not shocking that Nemo was mostly the same, even without the memories. He got flashes sometimes, he’d told Lysander; he got hunches. Just knew things sometimes, without realizing he knew them.

Is it better for Lysander, to realize he would have loved Nemo all along? Is is worse for Linus, to know Nemo had been out there these six terrible months? 

Lysander turns to leave, but pauses before he takes more than a handful of steps. 

“I loved him,” he find himself saying. He can’t look back. He can’t see - whatever is happening on Linus’s face, anymore. “I loved him,” he says again, more confidently. “The others -- I think they did too. But I - I loved him, and he had that, at least. If that brings you any comfort.” 

He practically runs back to the Temple. He only has so much courage. He can only bear so much pain atop his own.

| |

  
Linus returns to the Crossroads the next day. He is like a guardian there, Rowan explains, a bounty hunter. A guard. The people there respect him. 

Did Linus return to their home?, Lysander wonders. Some might find that morbid, or sad, but in the days that come Lysander finds himself in Nemo’s room, sometimes; he could hardly fault Linus for the same habit. 

Lex says nothing; the others around the Keep probably keep no such confidence, but Lysander hardly cares.

| | 

_ Please _ , he prays. He prays each night, as he drifts off to sleep.  _ Please, is he with you? _

Each night he receives no answer, and some nights he cries until he falls asleep. He cries out of sadness, and frustration, and the fear. He cries until he can cry no more, and he simply feels wan and spare. He’s never felt hopelessness like this -- even after all that has happened to Lysander, he could always console himself with the afterlife. With what small comforts are offered to the dead. 

_ Where are you?  _ he cannot help but wonder. _ Where are you, Nemo? _

| | 

Linus shows up at the Temple of the Raven Queen a month later, perhaps. Time is a slippery thing; as unrelenting as a river, as immeasurable as the sea or the number of stars in the sky, and Lysander hardly cares to track it. 

Linus looks tired. Dirty, bloody. He’d been in a fight recently. 

He doesn’t look good, even beneath that. 

“Here,” Lysander says. He takes Linus by the arm and pulls him gently away from the acolytes and other worshippers in the front chamber of the Temple. “Let me help.” He pulls them into one of the alcoves and casts a Cure Wounds, perhaps at a slightly higher level than he would someone else who wandered into the Temple. He can do as he pleases, or She can take it up with him. 

“Thanks,” Linus says, after a moment. His lip has knit itself back together, and he looks - less bruised. Lysander can say that at least. 

“You’re welcome,” he says. The jawline is similar, he realizes. The same sort of thing. And their ears, which stick out just a little bit too far to be handsome.

Lysander’s not exactly young anymore. He’s not innocent, or naive. He knows what grief does to people and he knows when someone wants to fuck him, generally speaking. 

There are two clear paths, here -- one where he takes his hand off Linus’s arm, now, and one where he doesn’t.

He doesn’t.

| |

She doesn't have anything to say about that either. 

| |

Lysander tries to leave the jar of eyes in the drawer. He tries not to open the drawer. Once a week, he tells himself. Just to make sure its still there. 

It’s creepy. It’s weird. He realizes this, even now.   
  
| | 

Linus returns to Soraya, on and off. Sometime he doesn’t stop by the Temple, and Lysander will hear from Rowan or Fen that he was at the Keep, or helped them with something, or ran a message here or there. Sometimes he shows up in Lysander’s room, unannounced. He isn’t stealthy like Nemo was; he hasn’t the magic, but he knows how to move lightly on his feet. 

In the dark hours between sunset and daybreak, they trade stories between them. Little bits and memories of Nemo. Linus has more, of course, a whole lifetime; but Lysander can offer the latest. The strangest, and oddest, and sometimes funniest, he thinks. Nemo was so goddamned beautifully odd. 

It seems that now Nemo is dead, at least he is remembered. Lysander can’t call it good news, precisely, but -- perhaps it is a silver lining. He can’t imagine feeling this pain and being so untethered by it. It would be enough to drive a man mad. 

“Always knew he liked men,” Linus says one night. “He was always --” He’s quiet for a moment. “He was always different, as a kid. Different in lots of ways, but definitely that. Most people don’t care, you know --”

And Lysander nods, because of course most people  _ don’t  _ care, they way most people  _ don’t  _ care if you’re an elf, or what god you worship, or where you’re from -- but there’s enough that  _ do _ .

“He was my brother,” Linus says, simply. “My baby brother, and that was always enough for me.”

“I don’t think he was ashamed of that,” Lysander offers. “Not here, not that I saw. Maybe he didn’t remember enough to be ashamed.” You learn shame, Lysander knows. Shame is branded into you. 

“That’s good,” Linus says. His voice sounds thick, but they hardly ever cry anymore, when they talk about such things. What’s there to cry about? What does that change? “I wanted that for him.”

| |

Linus is gone again the next morning, either to the Keep or because he’s left Soraya entirely. Lysander doesn’t care. Linus keeps his own counsel when it doesn’t involve Nemo, and Lysander has no illusions about what this is between them. He hopes, in many ways, to never see Linus again -- that Linus has finally poured out enough guilt and sadness and shame to never need to return here. That the scar tissue has grown strong enough for Linus to stop tearing the wound open. 

Lysander walks over to the chest of drawers and sets his fingers against the handle. The wood here is worn darker and smoother than the rest, from the oil of Lysander’s skin, from the time he’s spent standing just so.

Not today, he thinks. He won’t look today. 

Every day he managed to walk away used to feel like a small victory. A tiny win. He doesn't feel that way anymore. He’s not sure why he bothers. What does it cost him, when he's not sure he's gaining anything? 

He goes to the pool of blood and gets down on his knees before it. He’s not sure what he prays for, anymore. He barely knows why She still keeps him in Her service. Certainly there are those more devout. Certainly there are those who worship her more fervently.

_ Is he with You _ ? he asks, once more. A thousand times, surely. A thousand and one. 

_ He is beyond my sight, _ She says, and he would fall over with surprise if the despair had not turned him to stone. He so rarely  _ feels  _ anything that She tells him, but she seems… stern. Annoyed.  _ He is no child of mine _ .

“What does that mean,” he says. He hasn’t realized he’s spoke out loud until heads turn toward him, startled. “What does that  _ mean _ .”

_ I mark only mortal life. I attend only the funeral rites. Your shadow belongs behind you. At your feet.  _

“Fuck you,” he says. “ _ Fuck you _ ,” and he casts his holy symbol into the pool before he realizes what he’s done. The blood around it boils furiously, the shocked gasps of the other clerics and penitents in horrified chorus, and if She struck him down here and now it would be worth it. “I renounce you and your  _ bullshit _ .”

| |

He goes to his room and packs his things. He has so few of them, and they’re mostly serviceable - clothes, a dagger, a few books, a little money. His sister’s locket. Nemo’s eyes.

There’s a moment where Lysander only stares at the open drawer. It’s mad to take them, surely. It was mad to keep them in the first place. 

It feels a greater blasphemy to leave them here. 

| |

He’s barely stepped foot outside the Temple before he runs into Linus -- face first, nose pressed to the cool metal of Linus’s chestplate in the half second before he bounces back hard enough to nearly fall.

“Lysander!” Linus says, startled. One of his hands flies to Lysander’s elbow, the other to Lysander’s waist. “What’s happened? What’s wrong?” He looks worried. Maybe scared, even. 

Lysander isn’t. He’s not sure he’s even angry anymore. Maybe because Lysander can, in fact, take a goddamn hint. He could give a fuck about Her right now - he could maybe give a flying fuck about Her  _ ever again -  _ but there’s still something in the air. Someone is still lighting his way.

“I’m leaving,” is what Lysander says. “I’m done.” _ I’m done with Her, I’m done with this city, I’m done with this life.  _ “Where are you going?”

Linus blinks. “The Pocket. I - there’s a bounty to collect, with the Slayer’s Take. Then to the Crossroads.”

“I’m coming with you,” Lysander says. It’s not a question. What’s there about it to question, anymore? What about this doesn’t he want? “I’m never coming back to this place again.”

Linus’s eyes soften even as his grip on Lysander tightens. “Then we won’t.” 

“Do you need anything?”

“We can leave now,” Linus says, and they do.

  
  
  



End file.
